Code of a tired hero
by Syntia13
Summary: BW. Dinobot is dead and not coming back. No matter how much we hate the fact, no matter how many fanfics we'll write in attempt to change it, he'd died. Come on, we've all seen how it happened....Or have we?


**A/N:** _Written to lighten the mood after the previous story. For Yana also :o)  
_Disclaimer: _Transformers don't belong to me._

**Code of a tired hero**

_Dinobot is dead and not coming back. No matter how much we hate the fact, no matter how many fanfics we'll write in attempt to change it, he'd died. Come on, we've all seen how it happened.  
...Or have we?_

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"Mail!" Optimus yelled, poking his head through the door and tossing a sizeable package of letters at Rattrap. His optics caught a hologram of battered Dinobot's body, with a spark hovering over it, and he scowled.  
"Rattrap, someone will see!"  
"So what? Can't I gloat over a holo of my fallen arch-enemy?"  
"Could you at least _pretend_ you're grieving?"  
The small bot put a back of his hand to his forehead dramatically. "Oh, how will we _ever_ manage without dat oversized, stink-breathed, treacherous moron? Oh, is dat a strayed tear in my optic?" He shot an expressive glance at Optimus, who grunted impatiently. "Just shut it off, will you?"  
"Yea, yea..." the rat-bot reluctantly clicked the switch, shutting down the projector, and leafed through the package, sorting the letters in two piles.

"Flame for me, fan-mail to Dinobot. Flame for me, farewell card for Dinobot. Fla-- hey, a fan-mail for me! Finally!" He quickly scanned the letter, his ego swelling with each complement, true or not. He then pinned it to the board over his desk, and went back to sorting letters. When he was finished, it was a fact hard to overlook that Dinobot's pile was about five times higher than his. And he could bet there was not a single flame in it too.  
"I'm not believin' dis. It's been half a month, an dey're still writin'! Freakin' stupid predacon fangirl magnet!"

Shaking his head with irritation, he opened the topmost letter addressed to himself, started reading it, and sputtered. "Now, dat just tops it all! A condolence card!" His voice pitched in incredulity, as he read it out loud. " '_Dear Rattrap, I know how shocked and distressed you must be, after your best friend's death_...' Best friend! Best FRIEND?! Like I would ever befriend a dumb pack of a bolts like him!"

There was a slightest suggestion of an annoyed growl in the air, but Rattrap didn't seem to notice, as he read on. "...'_miss him, and the loss of his warrior skills is a painful blow for the team'_... Oh, PLEASE! All that hero-posturing wasn't worth a scrap! My sharp-shooting got us out of more tight corners than da lizard's sword-waving!"

The growl came again, more noticeable this time. Rattrap still didn't react.

"...'_you shouldn't keep it in, share your grief with your friends'_... Oh, man!" He flicked the letter aside with a disgusted face, and opened another.  
" '_Rattrap, you stink_.' How sweet, another flame to make my day." The letter joined the other on the floor. Or rather, two inch tick layer of paper on the floor. Rattrap was never one to keep a neat living space, and since the eventful battle in a valley, he stopped cleaning altogether. Disregarded mail, mixed with leftovers of Rattrap's meals, had already formed a nice, artistically disarranged heap in one corner.

Discouraged, the rat-bot reached for Dinobot's pile. " _'My Beloved Warrior'_ Oh, geez, Silverbolt style fangirl. Yuck. ... _'I cannot believe you're gone. When I saw your death, I felt my heart breaking to thousand bleeding pieces_...' " Rattrap dropped the letter with exaggerated gagging noises. "Ack, cuteness alert! I don'wanna know what comes next!"

He picked another piece of correspondence, this one pretty big and thick.  
" _'Dear Dinobot. Though I know you'll never read this, I still think I should post it. It was written for you, and I believe...'_ yadda yadda..." The Maximal skipped few paragraphs, to the eye-catching, decorative line.  
"... **_'Heart of a warrior_**' ... Huh? We don't have hearts, we're robots!" He started reading the debatably titled story aloud, but soon his voice trailed off. The detailed description of a femme Maximal called Velora he read with some interest, but what started happening next... By the time the fictional Dinobot dropped to his knees and admitted his undying love for Velora in a flowery, two pages long speech, the real-life Rattrap was howling with laughter. And when he reached the point where the two raptors and their seven kids lived happily ever after in a commandeered Darkside, he was lying in a helpless, convulsing heap on the floor.

"Oh, oh man," he choked out after some time. "Poor Chopperface. I guess I'd wanna kill myself too if I had ta deal with something like dis." He scrambled to his feet and tossed the story to the air, letting the pages fall down in a slow, shuffling rain. "I need a drink," he declared, leaving the room.

When he came back sometime later, his short moment of compassion seemed to be over. He slumped into a chair, putting his feet up on a table. He contemplated the small pile still lingering there, sipping on an energon cube.  
"Da good news is," he said out of the blue, "dat it's gettin' to be only one pound o' mail a day, not da usual four." He inspected his fingertips contently. "My brilliant scheme ta get me some peace and relieve da postal service is workin'!"

There was a tiny grounding sound, as if some unseen entity gnashed its teeth.  
Rattrap grinned.

"Ah, well," he said carelessly, "I may as well read 'em all."  
A torn envelope hit the floor.  
" ..._'My dear Dinobot'_ geez, dis one sounds like Megs. _'Thank you for saving the humans. I mean, I couldn't even write that, if you didn't sacrifice yourself back there.'..._ HUH! He didn't give a scrap about humans! Da trigger-happy son of a glitch just went dere fer a fight!"

There was no way to miss the strange growl this time - it reverberated in the walls, sending the slightest tremor through Rattrap's frame.  
The rat-bot looked up. "Eh? Da ventilation actin' up again?" he murmured with a suppressed snigger, and went back to reading.

"... _'You were so brave, and your last words so inspiring--_' Oh, dat does it!" Rattrap tossed a crumpled page to the wall. "Inspirin'? Dat was da lamest line dat ever left dat leatherbag's needled mouth! 'The Rest Is Silence'? What kind of last words is dat?! Ya were tryin' to give me a hint, ya slow processored bag o' rust? Huh? Well, here's yer tale: yer da worst, overfussed over, scale-bellied, fossil brain--"

"YOU'RE PUSHING YOUR LUCK, VERMIN!!!"

The harsh voice came out of nowhere, filling the entire room, the rage sounding in it almost enough to freeze the air and scare the living daylight out of most beings.

Not Rattrap, though. With a malicious glee painted on his face, the small bot turned his head to look at one particular place only he could find in a rubbish dump he called his room.

In one corner, there had once been a concealed trapdoor, now buried under few hundred pounds of recycling paper, and unavailable for detection. However, there was a tiniest crack left, and through it, a single red optic now burned at him furiously.  
Rattrap tutted. "Someone call ghostbusters, looks like my room is haunted."

In the darkness of his small prison, Dinobot called upon his trained self-control and leaned back with a quiet growl. Primus only knows how many times he had to forcibly keep himself from simply jumping out of there like a vengeful jack in the box, and taking this obnoxious, illiterate, infuriating pestilence's head.

But he couldn't do it, of course. It would ruin the whole point of rat's little scheme.

The con had involved a holo-projector, a dummy body and very careful timing, not to mention that it got him trapped in this crummy, narrow hidey hole, vulnerable to Rattrap's unrestrained teasing. But, Dinobot thought, dimming his optics dreamily, if all this would indeed get him rid of the dreaded fangirls, then, by the Pit, it was worth it.

The End

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A/N: No offence to fangirls or fanfiction writers was meant here. Remember, I'm one of both. I just thought, gee, how would _they_ react to this kind of attention?  
The story that sent Rattrap to his knees is fictional, that is, it does not exist. I've made up a title and a name after about five seconds of thinking. Any resemblance to any actual story is purely coincidental.

And don't ask me how our mail got to BW universe. It's a comedy, it doesn't have to make sense.

Of course, if you feel otherwise, you can always write a review and tell me so.

(My, how sneaky I've become... ;)


End file.
